Survey: How Teachers and Parents Feel About End-of-Year Testing

Gauge by Instructure recently conducted a survey of 333 K-12 public school teachers and 700 parents to assess their perception of how effective end-of-year tests are and how those results impact schools and school districts. The consensus: end-of-year testing is only moderately effective, but end-of-year tests are a large part of determining how teachers teach.

According to the survey, parents don’t have a lot of faith in the effectiveness of end-of-year tests:

66 percent of parents reported that end-of-year testing is only slightly effective to not effective at all in assessing how much their child has learned and how prepared they are to move on to the next grade.

What’s more, 41 percent of parents believe that opting out of end-of-year testing will encourage states to change how students are assessed, but only 12 percent report having ever requested that their children not participate in end-of-year tests.

Parents also report that they are unlikely to take additional action as a result of end-of-year test scores:

35 percent reported that they wouldn’t take any action and

Only 7 percent of parents indicated they would volunteer more at the school as a result of end-of-year test scores.

Parents are skeptical that teachers and students receive additional assistance based on low test scores:

Only 21 percent reported that they agree or strongly agree that actions are taken to assist ineffective teachers,

And only 24 percent agreed or strongly agreed that actions are taken to assist underperforming schools.

What’s more, most parents don’t believe that students who are performing below grade level receive additional instruction or intervention services:

29 percent of parents agreed that students receive intervention based on end-of-year tests.

On the flip side parents also don’t believe that students who test ahead of grade level are appropriately challenged. 29 percent of parents agreed or strongly agreed that students who test ahead of grade level are appropriately challenged.